and justice will go on conquering and to conquer, until our broad and beautiful land shall rest beneath the banner of freedom."

Victor Hugo, Edmund C. Stedman, William Dean Howells, Wendell Phillips, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Moncure D. Conway and scores of other prominent men united in declaring that the execution of Brown would ring the knell of slavery.

It is remarkable how that event brought together many of the actors in the mighty conflict soon to be. Over the gallows at Charlestown the hand of Fate wrought a paradox. Hither came to witness the execution Colonel Robert E. Lee, in a uniform of blue, soon to be exchanged for one of gray and the rank of commander-in-chief of the armies of the southern Confederacy. There was Governor Henry A. Wise, and there in the ranks of the Virginia troops was his promising son, the former to rise to the rank of brigadier general and the latter to lose his life in the service of the Confederacy. At the head of the cadets from Lexington stood stalwart Thomas J. Jackson, destined to become the Stonewall Jackson of history and to fall on the field of Chancellorsville. Henry C. Pate, leader of the Missourians and the captive of John Brown at Black Jack in Kansas, who witnessed with satisfaction the ignominious death of his oldtime foe, was soon to be a Confederate colonel and Lieutenant J. E. B. Stewart, who released Pate in Kansas, was later to become a famous Confederate cavalry general, and both were to die on the same battle field. John Augustine Washington, great-great-grandnephew of George Washington, was to pour out his blood on Virginia soil for the Confederate cause. Conspicuous for his horsemanship and soldierly bearing among the assembled troops was Cap

tain Turner Ashby, afterwards a Confederate general, who lost his life for "the lost cause." While there with the Richmond troops, that wayward evil genius, John Wilkes Booth, witnessed an act which was to pale into insignificance compared to his murderous deed that plunged the Republic into woe and shocked the civilized world.

And there, the master of ceremonies on this occasion, in gorgeous uniform, armed and bespangled, rode General William B. Taliaferro, who served and survived the Confederacy; and in the ranks of his men were many who were to rise to distinction and shed their blood in uniforms of gray.

And all these were here to punish treason to vindicate and uphold the majesty of the law of the United States and the commonwealth of Virginia.

Fate turned the kaleidoscope, and lo! all these by the same token became themselves traitors and boldly joined an insurrection to rend the Union asunder!

In order that the paradox might be complete, all the surviving followers of John Brown able to bear arms put on the uniform of blue and fought under the flag to preserve the Republic and blot "the dark stain of slavery * * * from our land." Richard J. Hinton, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, John Brown, Jr., Barclay Coppoc, Charles P. Tidd, Francis J. Merriam, Salmon Brown, Charles Moffett, Luke F. Parsons Osborn P. Anderson, Richard Raelf, Charles Lenhart, and others who were identified with Brown in Kansas or elsewhere answered the call of the Nation. The first two rose to the rank of colonel. Others gave their lives and all followed the flag with loyalty and zeal.

It is remarkable, too, that Governor Wise who so

eloquently denounced traitors in 1859, in 1861 should himself become one of the chief agents in taking Virginia out of the Union and the chief conspirator in the capture of the arsenal at Harper's Ferry and the transfer of the arms there to the enemies of the United States government;* and that this same governor, a year and a half later, should rejoice that armed forces were on their way to consummate the treasonable act that he had planned, and that he should exhort Virginians to take a lesson from John Brown and with spears and lances spill the blood of their craven Yankee foes.

Swiftly, with startling and dramatic sequence, the scenes shifted on the stage of history. Eighteen months after John Brown mounted the scaffold with the step of a conqueror and stood unawed with the hangman's rope around his neck, the Twelfth Massachusetts Regiment

*For all of Governor Wise's admiration of John Brown as a man, he did not hesitate to describe him and his men as "murderers, traitors, robbers, insurrectionists," and "wanton, malicious, unprovoked felons.' Yet just a year and a half later, April 16, 1861, Henry A. Wise, then out of office and with no more legal authority for his acts than had John Brown, actively conspired with Captain- later General-J. D. Imboden, General Kenton Harper and the superintendent, Alfred W. Barbour, and through them captured the Harper's Ferry arsenal precisely as had John Brown, save that there was no loss of life. But the blow was none the less directly aimed at the Federal Government. The undertaking of this act of treason was a compelling reason for the passage of the Virginia Ordinance of Secession on April 17, 1861. Governor Wise dramatically announced to the Secession convention that "armed forces are now moving upon Harper's Ferry to capture the arms there in the Arsenal for the public defence, and there will be a fight or a foot-race between volunteers of Virginia and Federal troops before the sun sets this day." On June 1, this same Henry A. Wise, whose abhorrence of John Brown's acts had been so profound, in a speech at Richmond urged his neighbors to: "Get a spear -a lance. Take a lesson from John Brown, manufacture your blades from old iron, even though it be the tires of your cart-wheels." Forgetful, too, of his panegyric of his Yankee captive's bravery and coolness, he assured his auditors that: "Your true-blooded Yankee will never stand still in the presence of cold steel." In so scant a space of time as a year and a half had the erstwhile Governor, by a singular revolution of the wheel of fate, himself come to occupy the position of a rebel against the established political order. John Brown, A Biography Fifty Years After. By Oswald Garrison Villard.

was on its way south to put down the rebellion and singing as it went:

"John Brown's body lies moldering in the grave,

But his soul goes marching on."

And the chorus of this battle song went on from Bull Run to Appomattox.

The second day of December, 1859, was clear and the spirit of peace seemed to rest on the Virginian valleys and mountains. But this was only the calm that precedes the storm. Over these roads were soon to march contending armies. The rocky escarpments of the Blue Ridge were to shake with the thunders of cannon; the heights of Bolivar were to be strewn with the dead and dying; the Potomac and the Shenandoah were to bear again ensanguined stains; the mighty hosts of the blue and the gray were to be swept into the red whirlwind of civil war.

Abraham Lincoln who sought to avert the crisis was soon calling for troops to preserve the Union and destroy slavery by force of arms. He too had moved far on the tide that had borne the Nation from its old moorings. Not infrequently his statements, in spirit, were in harmony with those from the jail at Charlestown. In his last inaugural address, almost from the brink of eternity, he uttered in those solemn, poignant words the decree that not only rebellion but slavery should perish by the sword:

"Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years

ago, so still it must be said, 'The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether"."

And not until the venerated Lincoln had joined the list of martyrs and John Wilkes Booth had paid the penalty for his dire deed could a distracted country say in the presence of the awful tragedy, "It is finished."